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Speakers

Keynote Speakers:

Mr. Rasul Butt was appointed to the position of Chief Executive Officer of the Competition Commission (Commission) in May 2021.

Mr. Butt joined the Commission in April 2015 as Executive Director (Corporate Services & Public Affairs), and was appointed to the position of Senior Executive Director in July 2016 overseeing the policy advisory, advocacy and corporate functions of the Commission.

Starting his career as a law lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Mara, Malaysia in the early 1990s, Mr. Butt left academia to take charge of the Compliance Department at the futures and options unit of Arab-Malaysian Banking Group. He returned to Hong Kong in 1999 and thereafter spent more than 16 years at the Urban Renewal Authority where his last position was General Manager (Corporate Planning). His main focus was formulating urban renewal policies and strategies which included Redevelopment of Industrial Building Pilot Scheme, Demand-led Redevelopment Project Pilot Scheme, Flat for Flat Scheme and Redevelopment Facilitating Services Scheme.

Mr. Butt obtained his Bachelor of Laws with Honours from the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, followed by Master of Laws (Public Law) from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales (Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn) and the Hong Kong Bar. He also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Construction Law and Arbitration from the University of Hong Kong, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Islamic Banking and Insurance from the Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance, London where he is an Associate Fellow.

Mr. Butt has a special interest in the development of competition law regimes in Mainland China and the ASEAN region and regularly engages fellow enforcers and members of the academia in promoting competition law and policy.

Ioannis Lianos is Professor, Chair of Global Competition Law and Public Policy at the Faculty of Laws, University College London. He is a member of the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal since 2024. He was President of the Hellenic Competition Commission from August 2019 to January 2024. Ioannis was elected a member of the Bureau of the OECD Competition Committee in 2021 and re-elected in 2022 and 2023. He was also a member of the EU High Level Group for the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and he was part of the Greek delegation during the negotiations for the adoption of the DMA. He was also the Chairman of the Special Law Commission that was in charge of the preparation of the New Competition Law Bill in Greece, which led to a significant reform of competition legislation in Greece in January 2022 (Law 4886/2022 which included important legislative innovations). He is the founding director of the Centre for Law, Economics and Society (CLES) at UCL Laws and served as the executive director of the Jevons Institute of Competition Law & Economics at UCL. He is also a fellow of the European Institute at UCL. He teaches the EU Competition Law course at the College of Europe in Natolin. He was previously the Vincent Wright chair at Sciences Po Paris between 2018-2019 as well as the Chief Researcher of the Skolkovo Laboratory on Law and Development, National Research University, Higher School of Economics and academic head of the BRICS Competition Law Project (2014-2019). He has also held an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship at the WZB (Social Science Research centre) in Berlin from 2014-2016. Between 2012 to 2014 he was the Gutenberg Research Chair at France’s Ecole Nationale d’Administration. He is a visiting professor in competition and intellectual property law at the Universities of Chile in Santiago, the University of Strasbourg and a fellow at the Australian National University’s Centre for Law & Economics and was an Emile Noel Fellow at New York University School of Law’s Jean Monnet Centre and a fellow at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. He was also a visiting professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong in 2014. Professor Lianos has been a Non-Governmental Advisor at the International Competition Network since 2009, a research partner to UNCTAD in competition law and policy since 2010, and an elected member of the advisory board of the American Antitrust Institute since 2010. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Competition Law and Economics and was the co-editor the Yearbook of European Law (between 2015-2019), both published by OUP. He was the co-editor of the GLOBAL COMPETITION LAW & ECONOMICS series with Stanford University press and since 2018 he is the presently the general editor of the book series Global Competition Law & Economic Policy with Cambridge University press. Between 2014 and 2019 he was a member of the review college of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. He has advised a number of governments and companies on competition law, IP matters as well as better regulation (impact assessment, CBA).

Speakers:

Laurent is a counsel in the firm’s Antitrust, Competition and Trade Group based in Hong Kong. His practice covers all areas of competition law, with a particular focus on global merger control investigations.

He has extensive experience with merger control regimes in Asia and Europe, and has advised clients on several complex Phase I and Phase II merger control investigations requiring remedies. His past experience has led him to act for clients active in various sectors, including financial sponsors and industrials. He also advises on trade defence questions, and has been guiding several Asia-based clients on foreign investment screening rules and the EU Foreign Subsidies regime.

Laurent is fluent in English, Dutch and French.

Yasmine Bouzoraa is a Lecturer in Law and a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen. Yasmine Bouzoraa holds a BMus in Music Performance & Songwriting, an LL.B in Dutch Law and an LL.M in European Economic Law (summa cum laude). Yasmine furthermore graduated with an MA in Legal Research (cum laude) in 2022. Yasmine currently works as a PhD candidate and lecturer at the department of European and economic law, where she teaches lectures and working groups. She furthermore supervises theses on EU constitutional law and competition law. In 2023, Yasmine also held a position as teaching assistant at Sciences Po in Paris. Yasmine’s main research interests include EU constitutional and institutional law, judicial law- making, democracy, competition law and state aid. She often writes about the intersection between constitutional and substantive law, and she approaches political problems from a legal perspective. Her PhD thesis is about the role of the (law-making of) Court of Justice of the European Union in the EU legal order.

Junhong Chu is a professor of marketing at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Before joining HKU, she worked at the NUS Business School as a dean’s chair and a tenured associate professor of marketing and earlier at Peking University as an associate professor of economics. Professor Chu has also visited Harvard University as a research fellow and the University of Michigan as an associate professor.

Professor Chu is an empirical modeler, works on big data, and does quantitative research in marketing and industrial organization. Her research interests include platform markets and the sharing economy, e-commerce, social media, P2P markets, and distribution channels. She applies both the classical and Bayesian approach to study firm competition and consumer behavior.

Professor Chu’s research has been published in leading academic journals such as Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Nature Human Behaviour, Population and Development Review, and Demography. She was an MSI (Marketing Science Institute) 2011 Young Scholar and has also won several research awards.

Professor Chu earned a BA in economics and a PhD in Law (Demography) from Peking University, and an MBA and PhD in Business Administration (Marketing) from the University of Chicago.

Highly acclaimed and Band 1 ranked Leading Antitrust Lawyer Stephen Crosswell is the chair of Baker McKenzie’s Asia-Pacific Antitrust & Competition Group and the TMT Industry Group. He is also the head of our Greater China Antitrust & Competition team. Clients laud Stephen for his “years of experience working on competition matters.” He is described as a “vital resource for clients seeking to navigate the nuances not only of the new local competition law regime in Hong Kong but also across other Asian jurisdictions – including China.” He is also one of the leading TMT lawyers in the region. Stephen has been granted “Solicitor Advocate” status before the Hong Kong Courts, meaning that he is uniquely placed as a specialist competition advocate in Hong Kong, having rights of audience in the Competition Tribunal and appeal courts. He represented one of the parties to the first enforcement action taken in Hong Kong’s Competition Tribunal.
Sébastien Evrard is the partner in charge of the Hong Kong office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. He is a member of the firm’s Antitrust and Competition Practice Group. Based in Asia since 2010, Sébastien handles complex antitrust matters in Asia and the European Union—including merger control, non-merger investigations, and litigation—for clients within a wide range of industries such as aviation/shipping, banking, energy/mining, media/entertainment, software/hardware, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and fast moving consumer goods. His practice also focuses on the antitrust aspects of intellectual property rights, and the interplay between data privacy and antitrust. He has represented clients before multiple regulators in Asia and Europe, and has litigated cases in multiple jurisdictions. Sébastien is regularly recognized as an expert and notable practitioner in his field by publications such as Chambers Greater China Region, The Legal 500 Asia Pacific, Who’s Who Legal and IFLR1000. The Legal 500 Asia Pacific states that “The ‘extraordinarily good’ Evrard is noted for his extensive knowledge of Chinese anti-monopoly law.” A client was quoted within the guide saying “Sébastien Evrard is an excellent antitrust lawyer, among the very best in this field. He picks up on issues quickly, is extremely responsive and a pleasure to work with.” Interviewed clients noted in the Chambers Greater China Region guide that “Sébastien is great at handling complex antitrust litigation. He is very experienced in guiding the direction of big-picture issues, and he understands how economics works for litigation.”, and that “he has the ideal combination of a formidable legal mind together with commercial and strategic acumen.” His recent experience includes advising: Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood Kimberly Clark’s acquisition of Softex Uber’s sale of its South East Asia business to Grab A leading technology company in abuse of dominance investigations and litigation in China Various car manufacturers in relation to cartel investigations in multiple Asian jurisdictions A manufacturer of fast moving consumer goods in a cartel investigation in Taiwan Hong Kong Telecommunications in a declaratory action before the Hong Kong Court of Appeal
Ariel Ezrachi is the Slaughter and May Professor of Competition Law and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He serves as the Director of the University of Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy. He is co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement (OUP) and the author, co- author, editor and co-editor of numerous books, including Competition Overdose (2020, HarperCollins), Virtual Competition – The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm Driven Economy (2016, Harvard), EU Competition Law – An Analytical Guide to the Leading Cases (7th ed, 2021, Hart), Competition and Antitrust Law – VSI (2021, OUP), Global Antitrust Compliance Handbook (2014, OUP), Research Handbook on International Competition Law (2012 EE), Intellectual Property and Competition Law: New Frontiers (2011, OUP), Criminalising Cartels: Critical Studies of an International Regulatory Movement (2011, Hart), Article 82 EC – Reflections on its recent evolution (2009, Hart) and Private Labels, Brands and Competition Policy (2009, OUP). His recently published papers focus on the digital economy, e-commerce, parity clauses, marketplace bans, vertical agreements, buyer power and the limits of competition law. They include the award winning papers ‘Sponge’, ‘Artificial Intelligence & Collusion’, and ‘Sustainable and Unchallenged Algorithmic Tacit Collusion’. He is also author of the BEUC consultation paper on ‘EU competition law and digital economy’ and co-author of the report on ‘Digital Platforms’ (Stigler Center, Chicago University, Booth School of Business) and the Independent Expert Report on Digitalisation and its Impact on Innovation (EU Commission). His research and commentary have been featured in The Economist, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Guardian (opinion), The Guardian, Nikkei, Times Higher Education, Harvard Business Review, HBR (2), Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Chicago University Pro Market, New Scientist, Politico, Politico-pro, Politico-Tec, China Daily, OBLB, WIRED, BBC, Bloomberg, Concurrences, GCR, The Scotsman, The Times, Sunday Times, Fast Company, NewStatesman, UNCTAD, OECD, Forbes, Factor, The Australian, Business Insider, and other international outlets. His work on algorithmic collusion (together with Prof Stucke) has been central to policy discussions in international organisations and competition agencies (including, among others, the CMA, OECD, UN, ICN, House of Lords, Monopolkommission, Autorite de la concurrence and the Bundeskartellamt). He is part of a reserch project on Competition Policy and Economic Inequality, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Prof. Hargreaves joined the Faculty in 2013 following the completion of his doctorate in law at the University of Toronto, where his thesis considered the privacy and legal implications of new mapping technologies that record public space for commercial purposes. It was supported by a major grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Prof. Hargreaves also holds a BCL from Oxford University, where his dissertation considered the interaction between proposed privacy standards in APEC and EU laws regulating the outward flow of personal data to non-European states. He also holds a JD from Osgoode Hall Law School and a BA in politics & sociology from McGill University.

Prior to joining CUHK, Prof. Hargreaves taught at Osgoode Hall Law School, worked as a policy advisor to the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic, and practiced law for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General in the constitutional law & policy branch. His areas of research and teaching reflect this background, with a dual focus on information & privacy law and constitutional law & legal theory. He welcomes discussions with LLB or JD students who are interested in writing independent research papers on those topics; prospective PhD students should, however, follow the established application procedures rather than contacting him directly with a proposal.

Prof. Hargreaves was Director of the LLB & Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies from 2015-2019, and won the Faculty’s Teaching Excellence award in 2017. He is external reviewer for a number of academic journals, a judge for the Undergraduate Awards (law category), an examiner for the overseas PCLL Conversion Examination, and sits on the Board of Advisors of Teach for Hong Kong.

Timothy Ker is head of the Hong Kong Competition Commission’s Advisory and International Affairs team. He has worked for the Commission since 2018, before then he was an in-house barrister and policy advisor for the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.

Hee-Eun Kim is the Director of Competition Policy, Asia Pacific, at Meta, based in Singapore. In her role, she provides strategic oversight and guidance on competition policy matters across the region. Before joining Meta, Hee-Eun served as the Principal Legal Counsel at Samsung Electronics. During her 8-year tenure at Samsung, she worked as the lead antitrust counsel, advising senior management and business divisions on all aspects of international antitrust matters related to semiconductor and mobile businesses. She successfully managed high-profile antitrust investigations, litigation, and commercial deals worldwide. She initially joined Samsung’s EU Affairs Office in Brussels, working closely with European institutions on competition law and digital policy issues in the tech industry. Prior to her time at Samsung, she practiced EU competition law and intellectual property law at Covington & Burling LLP in Brussels, and previously worked at the UN in New York and Geneva. In addition to a law degree from Korea, she holds an LL.M. in Law, Science & Technology from Stanford Law School and an LL.M. from the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center, as well as two postgraduate diplomas from King’s College London specialising in Economics for Competition Law and EU Competition Law. She is a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England & Wales and a member of the New York Bar.

Uta Kohl is a Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Southampton with research interests in the governance of the internet and technology as well as transnational corporations. She graduated from the University of Tasmania with a BA/LLB (First Class) and received a PhD in Law from the University of Canberra (2003). Uta Kohl is the author of the monograph Jurisdiction and the Internet (CUP, 2007, ppb 2010) and the textbook Information Technology Law (5th ed, 2016, Routledge, with D. Rowland, A. Charlesworth). In 2013, Google Inc invited her to do further research on internet jurisdiction, which led to the symposium National Law versus the Global Internet – Re-Negotiating Westphalia? (2014) and the edited collection The Net and the Nation State (CUP, 2017). More recently, she has branched out into other online governance questions, like predictive analytics (see edited collection Data-Driven Personalisation in Markets, Politics and Law, CUP, 2021, with J. Eisler) and comparative privacy and hate speech regulation (see articles below and the funded Leverhulme project ‘Modern Technologies, Privacy Law and the Dead’). She also acted as the Human Rights Trustee on the Board of Trustees of the Internet Watch Foundation (2014-2020). Uta Kohl has held various visiting positions, most recently as a visiting scholar at MIT (2023) in a collaborative project with Prof Nazli Choucri on corporate sovereignty on the internet.
Professor LAI Sin Chit Martin is an assistant professor at the City University of Hong Kong. Martin specializes in Competition Law and Law & Economics, with a particular interest in enforcement-related issues. His research has appeared in respected journals such as the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and Berkeley Business Law Journal. Martin has received his BEcon & Fin and MEcon from the University of Hong Kong, Juris Master from Tsinghua University, and LLM and SJD from the University of Pennsylvania. Martin also received some European Union competition law training from the University of Munich. His doctoral dissertation committee consists of Professors Jonathan Klick (Chair), Herbert Hovenkamp, and Christopher S. Yoo. Martin is a member of the New York State Bar.
Catrina is an experienced barrister with a versatile practice that spans all aspects of commercial disputes (including domestic and international arbitrations), competition and regulatory matters, administrative and constitutional law. She has been recognised as a “Band 1” junior barrister for commercial dispute resolution in Chambers & Partners. In addition, she holds a “Tier 1” ranking in commercial disputes, competition, and administrative and public Law in Legal 500. Her expertise in competition law has also garnered her recognition as a Recommended Global Leader in Who’s Who Legal. Catrina has handled numerous complex and high-value disputes, often involving technical evidence and/or raising novel legal issues. She has been described as “an outstanding advocate” and “a great technical lawyer” who is “great for matters which concern very difficult facts and evidence”. She is in demand for her “sharp legal mind”, “meticulous preparation”, “outstanding courtroom presence”, “quickness on her feet”, and as a practitioner who “thinks outside the box and always tests the limits of the evidence”. Outside of practice, Catrina is active in public service. She has served as a Temporary Deputy Registrar of the High Court and as a Deputy District Judge. She has also been appointed by the Government to various statutory appeal boards and tribunals. Since 2009, she has been serving as the Secretary of the Middle Temple Society in Hong Kong and was appointed an Honorary Member of The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 2018. Catrina speaks English, Cantonese and Putonghua (conversational), and is a CEDR-accredited mediator.
Roy LAW is a Postdoc in the School of Law at City University of Hong Kong. He has received his Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences and MPhil degree in Economics from Lingnan University. He holds a PhD degree in Economics from The State University of New York at Binghamton. Currently, his research focuses on economic regulations and laws that will potentially enhance competition in the local market.
Ms. Wan Li is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law of CUHK. She is interested in information & privacy law, cyber law, and legal theory. With her thesis, she hopes to generate concepts and analytical frameworks basing on a detailed understanding of digital age dilemmas in various contexts. She also aims to explore the causal explanations for specific phenomena formed with radical social transformations caused by the reform of big data, and to critically reflect on the existing legal regime on personal data privacy and data protection.
Professor Ping Lin is an Adjunct Professor of the Department of Economics of the University of Lingnan. His research interests are centered on industrial economics, competition policy, and innovation. His publications have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Financial Economics, International Economic Review, the Journal of Industrial Economics, the International Journal of Industrial Organization, European Economic Review, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of Development Economics. He is now the Director of the Centre for Competition Policy and Regulation at Lingnan University. He has written extensively on competition policy developments in China and Hong Kong. Professor Lin has provided consulting work to the State Administration for Market Regulation of China, Hong Kong Competition Commission, the Asian Development Bank, and other organizations. He was Member of the Telecommunications (Competition Provisions) Appeal Board, appointed by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, and Non-Governmental Advisor of the International Competition Network for Hong Kong.

Professor Jai Liu an Associate Professor of Marketing and an (affiliated) Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering & Decision Analytics (IEDA) at HKUST. His research interests are in the area of quantitative marketing, which combines marketing theories with quantitative methods, including statistical modelling, econometrics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. His primary research objective is to develop advanced data analytic methods that can help practitioners generate managerial insights from big data. He also helps companies/brands evaluate the effectiveness of various marketing polices. The substantive topics of his research cover a broad range of areas, including consumer search, advertising, pricing, recommender systems, user generated content, social media, big data analytics, behavioral economics, product assortment, supply chain, and AI.


Professor Liu’s past/current research have involved brands and companies from various sectors, such as department store, retail vending, IT, telecommunication company, automobile company, fast food restaurant chain, social media platforms, knowledge-sharing platforms, search engines for travel, grocery e-commerce, advertisng agencies, and email marketing company.

Klaudia Majcher joined the Institute of Business Law in October 2020 as an Assistant Professor in the Research Group on Competition and Digitalization. Before joining the WU, Klaudia worked between 2018 and 2020 as a Digital Policy Analyst at the European Policy Strategic Centre, the Brussels-based in-house think-tank of the President of the European Commission tasked with providing expert recommendations to the President and the College of Commissioners. In this capacity, she was responsible for providing advice on EU’s digital policies related in particular to competition in online markets, data initiatives, and Artificial Intelligence.

Klaudia obtained her doctoral degree at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), where in September 2020 she defended her dissertation titled “Coherence between EU Data Protection and Competition Law in the Digital Market”. She conducted parts of her research as a Visiting Researcher at the Fordham Law School in New York. Between 2014 and 2018, she also taught courses on EU competition law, data protection, and general EU law at the VUB and the University of Zagreb. In 2013, Klaudia received her LL.M. degree in European Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

Sandra Marco Colino is an Associate Professor at CUHK Faculty of Law. She specialises in competition law, merger control, the digital economy, technology law, EU law, telecommunications, and law & economics. She joined the Faculty in 2010 and is the Deputy Programme Director of the Master of Laws (LLM) in International Economic Law. She previously directed the Centre for Financial Regulation and Economic Development (CFRED), and the Summer Schools on EU Competition Law at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium). She sits on the Academic Board of the law firm Dictum and on the Scientific Committee of the European University Institute’s Centre for a Digital Society and has served as Non-Governmental Advisor (NGA) to the International Competition Network. Prior to moving to Hong Kong, she was a Lecturer at the University of Glasgow (UK). Prof. Marco Colino holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence (Italy) and an LLM from the University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain). A qualified lawyer in Spain and a member of the Madrid Bar, she has worked as stagiaire at the European Commission (Belgium) and has trained in various Madrid law firms. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (USA), the University of California – Berkeley (USA), the University of Melbourne (Australia), the University of Birmingham (UK) and the University of Glasgow. She is a member of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA), a Fellow of the Transatlantic Technology Law Forum of Stanford University (USA), and an Associate Researcher at the Royal University Institute for European Studies in Madrid. In 2010 she founded the Communications Policy and Regulation Scholars Forum (CPRSF). She is the Hong Kong news correspondent to the European Competition Law Review, and an analyst for Agenda Pública. Her award-winning research has been extensively published in leading peer-reviewed journals and US law reviews. She is the author of various books, including the textbook Competition Law of the EU and UK (Oxford University Press), now in its 8th edition, and the monograph Vertical Agreements and Competition Law (Hart). She is the Principal Investigator of three major research projects funded by Hong Kong’s Research Grants Council, and a member of two EU-funded Jean Monnet research networks. She was a founding member and the Deputy Director of the European Union Academic Programme in Hong Kong, a collaboration between four of the city’s leading universities co-funded by the European Union. Prof. Marco Colino’s honours and recognitions include the Young Researcher Award (CUHK, 2021), the Award for High-Impact in Legal Scholarship (CUHK, 2020), the Academic Excellence Award (Global Competition Review, 2020), the Antitrust Writing Award (Concurrences, 2018), the award for best paper and presentation (Georgetown University’s Center for German and European Studies, 2004), and the Teaching Excellence Award (CUHK, 2017).
Dr Eliza Mik is an Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Prior to that she was researching and teaching at the Singapore Management University from January 2010 until December 2018, and then at Melbourne Law School throughout 2019. Before joining academia, she worked in-house for a number of software and telecommunications companies in Australia, Poland, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. She advised on software licensing, technology procurement, digital signatures, and e-commerce regulation. Her PhD focused on the private law aspects of e-commerce and on general problems of transaction automation. From 2014, she has actively researched smart contracts and blockchains, with a special emphasis on the legal prerequisites of their successful implementation in mainstream commerce. Eliza has advised the World Bank and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. At present, she is a member of the UNCITRAL Expert Group for the Digital Economy, a member of the Inclusive Global Legal Innovation Platform on ODR (iGLIP, Hong Kong), a Research Associate at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Society and Technology (TILT, Netherlands) and an Affiliate Researcher with the Centre for AI and Digital Ethics at the University of Melbourne (CAIDE, Australia).
Marcus is a partner in our Antitrust and Foreign Investment Group, based in Hong Kong. He was named Antitrust Lawyer of the Year (Under 40) by Global Competition Review in 2021. He regularly advises on regional antitrust investigations, compliance, multi-jurisdictional merger control and foreign investment matters, focussing on assisting multinational and Asia-based clients. He has extensive experience advising on antitrust matters before the Hong Kong Competition Commission and agencies in competition regimes across Southeast Asia. Marcus has taken a lead in merger control and foreign investment aspects of Asian and global transactions, including advising on transaction structure and handling complex merger and foreign investment filings. Marcus has a wide range of experience based on his work in both Europe and Asia, as well as being a former in-house lawyer at the Hong Kong Competition Commission. Prior to moving to Asia, he was based in Brussels and Beijing and worked on a range of global merger, cartel and antitrust matters, including investigations with complex remedy/commitment processes in the EU and China, leniency applications, and multi-national litigation. He has experience working with clients in several industries, including the financial services, healthcare, IT, telecommunications, food & beverage, and retail sectors. He regularly supports financial sponsors in their investments across the region. Marcus is recognised by legal directories with clients praising him as “one of the pioneers of Hong Kong’s competition ordinance” on Who’s Who Legal and that “Marcus’ advice is always practical and reliable, and above all, he can understand and think from clients’ perspectives” on Legal 500.
Alexandr Svetlicinii is an associate professor of law at the University of Macau. Prior to joining the University of Macau, Alexandr was a senior researcher at the Jean Monnet Chair of European Law of the Tallinn Law School, Tallinn University of Technology (Tallinn). Alexandr received his law degree at the Free International University of Moldova (Chisinau), LL.M International Business Law (Cum Laude) with specialization in EU law at the Central European University (Budapest), Master of Research (Law) at the European University Institute (Florence) and PhD in Law at the European University Institute (Florence). Research interests include: comparative competition law, comparative private law, international business law and alternative dispute resolution. Languages: English, Romanian, Russian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.

Marc Waha leads our Asia Antitrust and Competition Team.  He is based in the Hong Kong and Tokyo offices.

Marc advises international companies on antitrust regimes in East Asia, and Asian companies on global competition compliance issues, multi-jurisdictional merger filings and international cartel investigations, particularly in Europe and Asia.  For more than 20 years he has represented clients active in a wide variety of industrial and services sectors, with a focus on advising Asian companies on global antitrust and competition law matters.

Recent work highlights include:

  • advising two airlines in respect of investigations by the Hong Kong and Malaysian competition authorities into their proposed joint venture arrangements;
  • advising QatarEnergy in respect of Asian merger control clearances for eight parallel natural gas joint ventures with international energy companies;
  • securing merger control clearance for one of the world’s largest Sino-foreign upstream oil joint ventures;
  • representing a third party in obtaining the imposition of remedies by Japan’s Fair Trade Commission in respect of Google’s acquisition of Fitbit (the authority’s first ex officio review of a foreign transaction as a “killer acquisition”);
  • securing the end of an investigation by the Hong Kong Competition Commission into a ports terminal joint venture by way of commitments;
  • assisting the operator of a digital marketplace in respect of an investigation by the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore, with the authority deciding not to take action; 
  • securing unconditional clearances across Asia for the merger of the two largest airlines in Hong Kong; and
  • successfully defending a respondent in the first court case brought by the Hong Kong Competition Commission, with the court dismissing the Commission’s case.

Marc is the author of the first edition of the Hong Kong Competition Law Handbook (Butterworths).  He and the Norton Rose Fulbright team have been involved in training programmes for Asian competition authorities.  Legal guides have ranked our Asia Competition Team as a top tier competition practice and Marc as a leading lawyer for several years, commenting as follows:  “High reputation for his merger control clearance work” (Chambers & Partners Global Guide);  and  “Clients praise Marc Waha as a ‘business-minded, straight-to-the-point and brilliant lawyer'” (European Legal 500).

Masako Wakui is a Professor of Law at Kyoto University. She previously taught at Universities of Osaka City and Rikkyo. She is a researcher in Japanese Competition Law and Policy. Her research interests include economic law, merger regulation, consumer protection, public procurement, intellectual property rights, and social law. Her writing has been nominated for the Antitrust Writing Awards (2016 and 2021). She is the author of the book Antimonopoly Law: Competition Law and Policy in Japan, now in its second edition.

Normann Witzleb joined CUHK Law in 2021. He was previously an Associate Professor and Associate Dean (International and Engagement) in the Faculty of Law of Monash University Australia.

His research focus is on privacy and data protection law, the law of torts and remedies, as well as comparative law. His recent book publications include Contract Law in Changing Times: Asian Perspectives on Pacta Sunt Servanda (Routledge, 2023), edited; Big Data, Political Campaigning and the Law: Democracy and Privacy in the Age of Micro-Targeting (Routledge, 2020), with M Paterson & J Richardson (eds) and Remedies: Commentary and Materials, 7th ed (Thomson Reuters, 2020), with E Bant, S Degeling & K Barker. Some of his recent research is available from SSRN and ResearchGate.

Prof Witzleb maintains an adjunct position at Monash Law, where he teaches an LLM course on Privacy and Surveillance in the age of AI. He is admitted to practice in the Australian Capital Territory, a barrister of the High Court of Australia and a fully qualified German lawyer. In 2019 and 2020, he consulted with the Australian Attorney-General’s Department and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on law reform projects in privacy and information law.
Prof Witzleb is an experienced PhD supervisor, who welcomes expressions of interest from higher degree research students in his areas of expertise.

Professor Wolff was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Law in January 2019 and assumed the Deanship on 30 September 2019. Prior to that he was the Dean of the CUHK Graduate School from September 2014 to August 2019. Professor Wolff was a founding member of the Faculty of Law (then: School of Law). He has served amongst others as Associate Dean (Faculty Development) (9/2008 to 7/2010), as Director of the Master of Laws Programmes in International Economic Law, Common Law and Chinese Business Law (9/2008 to 7/2011) and as Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) & Head of Graduate Division of Law (8/2010 to 8/2014). Professor Wolff specializes in International and Chinese Business Law, Comparative Law, and Private International Law. He has studied, worked and conducted research in a number of jurisdictions, including mainland China, Taiwan, and the USA. He is admitted to practice in England & Wales and in Germany. He is frequently invited to work as consultant with multi-national companies and law firms on investment projects in the Greater China region.
Yalun Yen joined National National Cheng Kung University in 2014. Her main academic interests involve antitrust law, intellectual property law, and financial regulations. She was a research scholar at the University of Michigan Law School from 2011-2012. In addition, before embarking on an academic track, she was a partner in Infoshare Tech Law Office in Taipei, who have worked with and represented large corporate clients in Taiwan since 2001, and was also a member of the Editorial Committee for Taipei Bar Journal from 2006 to 2011. She has also been a member of the New York State Bar since 2012. Yalun Yen received a Ph.D. degree from the College of Law, National Taiwan University and an LL.M. degree from the University of Michigan Law School. In 2013, She received the Distinguished Thesis Award from the College of Law, National Taiwan University for her doctoral dissertation, “Effects of Competition Policy on Taiwan’s Financial Industry: From the Perspective of Competition Law,” which was published by the College of Law, National Taiwan University in 2014. She has co-authored several books on intellectual property law and antitrust law and has written various articles, several of which focus on antitrust law.